bourhood. Are you and your dog
travelling far?"

"It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the summer. I am
travelling far, for I travel till September. Life amid summer fields is
a very joyous thing."

"Is it indeed?" said Kenelm, with much _naivete_. "I should have thought
that long before September you would have got very much bored with the
fields and the dog and yourself altogether. But, to be sure, you
have the resource of verse-making, and that seems a very pleasant and
absorbing occupation to those who practise it,--from our old friend
Horace, kneading laboured Alcaics into honey in his summer rambles among
the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal Richelieu, employing himself
on French rhymes in the intervals between chopping off noblemen's heads.
It does not seem to signify much whether the verses be good or bad,
so far as the pleasure of the verse-maker himself is concerned; for
Richelieu was as much charmed with his occupation as Horace was, and his
verses were certainly not Horatian."

"Surely at your age, sir, and with your evident education--"

"Say culture; that's the word in fashion nowadays."

"Well, your evident culture, you must have made verses."

"Latin verses, yes; and occasionally Greek. I was obliged to do so at
school. It did not amuse me."

"Try English."

Kenelm shook his head. "Not I. Every cobbler should stick to his last."

"Well, put aside the verse-making: don't you find a sensible
enjoyment in those solitary summer walks, when you have Nature all to
yourself,--enjoyment in marking all the mobile evanescent changes in her
face,--her laugh, her smile, her tears, her very frown!"

"Assuming that by Nature you mean a mechanical series of external
phenomena, I object to your speaking of a machinery as if it were a
person of the feminine gender,--_her_ laugh, _her_ smile, etc. As
well talk of the laugh and smile of a steam-engine. But to descend to
common-sense. I grant there is some pleasure in solitary rambles in fine
weather and amid varying scenery. You say that it is a holiday excursion
that you are enjoying. I presume, therefore, that you have some
practical occupation which consumes the time that you do not devote to a
holiday?"

"Yes; I am not altogether an idler. I work sometimes, though not so hard
as I ought. 'Life is earnest,' as the poet says. But I and my dog are
rested now, and as I have still a long walk before me I must wish you
good-day."

"I fear," s